Santiago (The city of St. James)

So this weekend wewenttoSantiago, the capital of Chile. It is a beautiful city with an advanced Subway or metro system just off the Andes. There we visited the home of the executive branch, where Allende was holed up for the governments last stand before Pinochet"s soldiers took over. The buildings still have patches covering bullet holes caused when the airforce flew over the area in 73. It was really interesting to note how much more assessible their governmental leaders are. Whether through naivety or calculated risk, their leaders frequently walk the streets and their president customarily lives in their previous house with only minimal security increases and walks to work in the mornings. We also drove by their Supreme Court, the US Embassy, and the national newspaper office. We also passed the site of what will be the tallest building in Latin America (90 stories overtopping the current tallest of 45 stories)Our tour guide was half Australian half Chilean because his family moved to Australia after being exiled along with1 millionother people. (Australia was happy to take people... something about having a lot of land and a very small population, idk) He returned in 92 and has lived here since. On bad days in the winter,living in Santiago can be like smoking a packof cigarettes a day because of the smog trapped between the mountains. Luckily, we had horrible weather on Saturday which made for gorgeous weather and a view of the mountains on Sunday. We also went to the museum of Pre-Columbian Art which holds some really old artifacts with the oldest being from around 3000 BC. We also saw there the oldest mummies every discovered. Pretty cool, eh!

For dinner we went to a really nice restaurant for steak. With appetizers, salads, good steaks, wine, and dessert, it came out to around 22 USD.

We explored some other things on Sunday and took the bus home in the evening. Pictures of the trip and cultural observations to come.